Читать книгу The Complete Works of F. Scott Fitzgerald онлайн

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She wondered how to best introduce the subject of Mr. Abbot.

“You’re quieter,” she began tentatively. “You look as if you were more ready to settle down.”

“I want to come out this fall.”

“But I thought——” Mrs. Dickey stopped and coughed—“Rumors had led me to believe——”

“Well, go on, Mother. What did you hear?”

“It came to my ears that you were engaged to that young Charles Abbot.”

Diana did not answer and her mother licked nervously at her veil. The silence in the car became oppressive. Mrs. Dickey had always stood somewhat in awe of Diana—and she began to wonder if she had gone too far.

“The Abbots are such nice people in Boston,” she ventured uneasily. “I’ve met his mother several times—she told me how devoted——”

“Mother!” Diana’s voice, cold as ice, broke in upon her loquacious dream. “I don’t care what you heard or where you heard it, but I’m not engaged to Charley Abbot. And please don’t ever mention the subject to me again.”

In November Diana made her debut in the ballroom of the Ritz. There was a touch of irony in this “introduction to life”—for at nineteen Diana had seen more of reality, of courage and terror and pain, than all the pompous dowagers who peopled the artificial world.